On this page I am presenting to you a selection of websites that provide fantastic materials in all levels and areas of English learning, including grammar exercises, articles, radio programs, videos etc. You can easily incorporate these materials into your lessons, or you can use them to assign online homework to your students. I hope you will find them useful and enjoyable. If you know of any websites that are not listed here, please let me know, so you can help me make this page better.
Grammar and vocabulary
Resource centers
Radio and news
Videos and animations
Task sheets
Exams and placement tests
Young learners
Grammar and vocabulary
Grammar Monster
This is an all-about-grammar site with a quick test section on the main page, and a focus on punctuation, easily confused words and common errors. You can test your knowledge on the Grammar Tests page.
English Grammar
You can find lessons on all aspects of English here, including style guide, creative writing and proofreading sections. There are downloadable lessons in PDF as well as online exercises and videos.
English Grammar Online
Visit this website for a huge collection of grammar and vocabulary exercises. Most of the grammar tasks are divided into levels, starting with the easiest part of a given grammar point. There are tests and games/riddles to revise what you have learned.
english-grammar.at
“This website provides you with practice material and online grammar and vocabulary exercises for students and teachers . Exercises can be done on browser, tablets and smartphones. Downloads are available for free and are in PDF Format .” The exercises can easily be used for online teaching.
Learn English Today
“Free English resources and materials for ESL-EFL learners of all levels.” You can begin with a brief and to-the-point grammar explanation, and then move on to an exercise to try out your freshly acquired knowledge. You can also learn words, idioms, proverbs and phrasal verbs, and there are word games and fun activities too.
Espresso English (B2-C1)
This is a professional website for advanced learners where you can purchase video courses or e-books created by an English teacher lady. The good news is that on the Free Samples page you can download a free sample pack with useful short videos and task sheets. You can also find a great bunch of her videos on YouTube.
Resource centers
British Council – Learn English Teens
This is a comprehensive website with reading, writing, listening and speaking tasks. Moreover, there are grammar videos, phrasal verbs and other vocabulary exercises.
ELTbase
If you are looking for ESL worksheets, language quizzes, grammar notes or lesson plans, this is the perfect website for you.
YourEnglishPal (B1-C2)
This resource center offers a wide range of elegantly designed lesson plans on a variety of topics for students over B1. “Free ESL lesson plans focused on boosting students’ fluency and confidence when speaking for intermediate and advanced learners of English. Each lesson plan includes conversation, vocabulary, reading, listening, and writing activities.”
TEFLtastic
This is an amazing website with an enormous collection of classroom materials – worksheets, games, articles covering literally all possible fields of English teaching. Besides the usual things, you can find a “cultural training games” section, or materials for needs analysis, first lesson planning, and even teacher training.
Montessori for Everyone (A1-B2)
“Beautiful materials to liven up your language area! Includes fun activities, word study, story writing cards, and more!” Following the link, you will find an incredible collection of freely downloadable PDFs. As it is noted at the top, please always link the website instead of uploading their materials to anywhere.
Hancock McDonald
“Mark Hancock and Annie McDonald have been teachers of English since the early ’80s, in various countries around the world. Over the years, we have each developed different skills and specialist interests within the field of EFL, and here we bring these complementary skills together.” Besides tons of materials for English lessons, you will find inspiring articles and talks on ELT.
Icebreakers
This is probably the biggest collection of ice-breaker, get-to-know-you and team building games available online. If you haven’t come up with a warmer for tomorrow morning, or you are organizing a training course or workshop, this is definitely the place to start with.
Warm-up activities and time-fillers
Click above and delve into a pool of fun and easy activities to start a class or re-energize your students. Most of the games require no preparation, or all you need is a piece of paper or a blackboard. “With a good warmer you can put your students into English mode.”
Teach-This.com
This website offers a remarkable range of ESL activities at top quality. You need a premium subscription if you want to have access to all the materials, yet a great deal of PDF task sheets can be downloaded for free. All activities begin with detailed instructions.
Twinkl
“Twinkl is an international online educational publishing house, producing teaching and educational materials.” You can find thousands of worksheets, resource packs or interactive games in any subject, even Hungarian. There is a section for SEN, too.
Radio and news
BBC 6-Minute English (B1-B2)
6-Minute English is a BBC program that is tailor-made to language learners. You can listen to radio conversations on dozens of topics. The speakers speak clearly and relatively slowly, so even a B1 level learner can follow their discussion. In every episode there is a short list of vocabulary in focus. They stop and explain all the words and expressions on the list as they come up, and they go through them at the end. Besides the MP3s, you can download the transcripts in PDF.
VOA Learning English (B1-B2)
VOA (Voice of America) is a news website which offers an alternative page specifically designed for learners. You can read the same articles, but depending on the level you choose on the top bar (Level 1-3), the language of the articles is somewhat simplified, the difficult words are bolded in the text, plus at the bottom there is a list of the highlighted words with short definitions. You can also listen to the articles or download the audio file. There is a great deal of additional material on the site, for example, short video clips and grammar lessons.
News in Levels (A1-B2)
This is a news website for language learners. All the news items are very short, usually one or two paragraphs long. All pieces of news are available in three levels. Level 1 uses short and simple sentences, whereas Level 3 offers authentic texts. Just like in VOA articles, the difficult words are bolded and listed at the bottom with brief definitions. Using this website, you can do fun activities, such as a news report read out by the students.
NPR (B2-C2)
National Public Radio is one of America’s major radio stations. Besides the 24-hour stream, there are several different types of radio programs that you can listen to, including news reports, interviews, quiz shows or All Things Considered, one of the most popular programs that cover exciting topical issues. Most of the programs are downloadable as well. In many cases, a transcript for them is also provided, so it becomes easier for you to make a reading or listening task out of them. NPR is available through mobile apps too. Download NPR One to listen to a wide range of podcasts.
Videos and animations
Film English
Kieran Donaghy brings you one of the most popular ELT websites of all time. You can find elaborate lesson plans that are built on videos, short films or clips from famous movies. The materials are entirely free of charge, but you can support Donaghy by sending him monthly or one-off payments.
Learn English with TV Series (B1-C2)
“On this channel, we will practice and improve our listening comprehension, using your favorite TV shows (like Friends, Big Bang Theory, How I Met Your Mother) to learn to understand native English without getting lost…” You can find hilarious scenes from these TV series, and there are some extraordinary pieces as well, such as Barack Obama’s speech. All of the videos are presented with and without subtitles, with a section in between that covers the most interesting or useful expressions.
TED (B2-C2)
TED is an international conference where people from all corners of the world give 5-20 minute presentations on literally anything ranging from science through current social issues. There are incredibly witty and humorous talks by academics, musicians, educators etc., most of whom are truly the masters of public speaking. You can watch all the talks on the official website with subtitles in dozens of languages. You can even download the videos or only their soundtracks. One of the most remarkable features is the interactive transcript which, as you listen to the talk, highlights the sentence being said at the moment. This website is a treasure chest for teachers either in terms of language learning or any other specific subject. Here is one of the most popular talks, which has gone viral several times in social media, given by education specialist Sir Ken Robinson:
TED-Ed (B2-C2)
This is an other TED website where you can watch five-minute video lessons on every possible subject in the world. The videos are brilliantly animated, and usually narrated by an American voice. You can turn on subtitles for all lessons. The site offers follow-up bits as well. After watching the video, there is a “Think” section with multiple choice questions, a “Dig deeper” section with additional resources, and finally a “Discuss” section where you can start a discussion on the topic. If you sign up, you can even customize the lessons for your own purposes.
RSA Animate and RSA Shorts
“The RSA Animate series is a unique way of illustrating and sharing the world-changing ideas from the RSA’s free public events programme.” On these two pages of the same website you can watch excerpts from several kinds of presentations illustrated with fantastic animations. They are a useful tool for learning with their engaging visual style.
Task sheets
Busy Teacher
This is the ultimate site for teachers in a hurry. There are freely downloadable tasks sheets on any topic at all language levels possible.
iSLCOLLECTIVE
This is similar to Busy Teacher. There are only two major differences: you need to sign up for free before downloading anything, plus there are video lessons with online tasks.
Exams and placement tests
Exam English
On this page you can find practice tests for all the major international English exams, including IELTS, TOEFL, TOEIC and Cambridge English. Besides the mock exam papers, there is a 15 question level test and an exam comparison section too.
Euro Nyelviskola – Angol szintfelmérő
This is a placement test with 50 multiple choice questions from A1 level up to B2 level, mostly covering grammar points. There is a funny love affair woven into the test, so you can turn dry testing into fun.
Young learners
ESL Kids
Download colorful flashcards and worksheets, or choose from a long list of games that you can use with young children. The site also presents an example for the entire process of meeting the students and giving a lesson.
Super Simple Online
This is a peculiar American website with tons of videos. The two main characters of the videos are a yellow puppet called Tobee and a teacher. They present short video lessons to the kids using songs and lots of movement. Here is a video titled “Hello Hello!”:
Diákcsoda Blog 